Gnossienne No. 4

Perseus and Medusa perched on boulders
watch the evening news. Blue TV light touches them in a perfectly dark cave.
Trickling water just audible, punctuated by nearer bouncy sound of water in a
struck steel bowl.

PERSEUS: Mary, tell me what he looks like.

MEDUSA: Gaunt. Greek I think. Straight
teeth…

PRESENTER: …inside the church had
earlier chanted slogans against Egypt’s Islamist President—

PERSEUS: —they’re playing footage.

MEDUSA: Shh.

PERSEUS: Who’s bombing who.

MEDUSA: Oh stop. You know it’s not real.

PERSEUS: I don’t know that. You stone him.

MEDUSA: How could I. He’d have to see me…

PRESENTER: …attacked mourners as they exited
the cathedral, pelting them with rocks and petrol bombs. The Christians—

PERSEUS: How do you do it.

MEDUSA: How. Oh.

PERSEUS: That’s what I’ve wondered.

MEDUSA: Ever wonder if the light’s still on
in the fridge after you close it.

PERSEUS: No.

MEDUSA: Well. You know Jasper Johns. The
numbers.

PERSEUS: You have any non-visual metaphors.

MEDUSA: Here, take this. (she folds his
hand around a piece of charcoal)

PERSEUS: …

MEDUSA: It’s charcoal. I want you to make a
self-portrait on the wall to your left.

PERSEUS: But I can’t see.

MEDUSA: That’s the point.

PERSEUS: I don’t know how to draw.

Medusa takes his hand, starts him off.
Perseus continues unaided.

PRESENTER: …said a fire had started in a
building next to the Cathedral, but the blaze had since been extinguished. In
Kabul twenty-six…